Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

vacation

Synopsis

    vacation
    vacation [options] [user]

Automatically return a mail message to the sender announcing that you are on vacation.

Use vacation with no options to initialize the vacation mechanism. The process entails several steps.

1. Create a .forward file in your home directory. The .forward file contains:

           \user, "|/usr/bin/vacation user"

2. user is your login name. The action of this file is to actually deliver the mail to user (i.e., you), and to run the incoming mail through vacation. Add any appropriate options to the vacation command line.

3. Create the .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir files. These files keep track of who has sent you messages, so that they only receive one “I’m on vacation” message from you per week.

4. Start an editor to edit the contents of .vacation.msg. The contents of this file are mailed back to whoever sends you mail. Within its body, $SUBJECT is replaced with the contents of the incoming message’s Subject: line. You should include at least a Subject: header line of your own, such as:

           Subject: I am out of the office until next Wednesday

Remove or rename the .forward file to disable vacation processing.

You may also create a .vacation.filter file that specifies email addresses and/or domains to which vacation will send messages. Addresses that don’t match will not receive a vacation message. Case is ignored in the .vacation.filter file, as are empty lines and lines beginning with #.

Options

The -a, -e, -f, -j, -m, -s, and -t options are used within a .forward ...